Apple iTunes, Movielink and are the largest film download services, but none of them is available yet in Ireland. If you'd rather watch TV programmes than feature films, most networks now host their own programmes online.

RTÉ has an excellent online service, posting their material a few days after airing, perfect for catching the latest embarrassing Pat Kenny moment without having to sacrifice your Friday night to the Late Late Show.

Channel 4, ITV and the BBC have their own "on-demand" video services, but there are various computer and territorial restrictions, so the BBC's can't be viewed outside the UK, and Mac users needn't bother trying Channel 4's .

Possibly the best online TV experience is at www.comedycentral.com, with new episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report returning this week despite the writers' strike, and classics such as The Chappelle Show and Crank Yankers also available for viewing.

Finally, there is , which hosts mountains of public-domain material, so you have no excuse not to bone up on early cinema pioneers such as DW Griffith and Dziga Vertov.

And the non-legit

One of the largest sites that hosted links to streamed movies, www.tv-links. co.uk, was closed in October and its owner, a 26-year-old man from Cheltenham, was arrested, despite not having hosted any copyright-infringing material himself. This set quite a precedent - Google also links to plenty of copyright-infringing material, but the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) don't go arresting Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

In any case, there are still plenty of legally grey, morally wrong and always frustrating alternatives out there. If you really, really need to catch, say, the first episode of the new series of The Wire, options include: www.surfthechannel.com www.alluc.org www.peekvid.com www.bringpopcorn.com